Mowledy. She was a lovely animal, a laughing, singing, cooking, sewing animal; and when Mr. Mowledy thought of her, as he very often did, he sometimes wondered whether we are all born with a soul, or whether we attain to a soul only through prayer and sorrow.

It was on a gusty afternoon, late in October, when woods are golden and every wind scatters its fairy' treasure upon the earth, that a party of clowns were seated on the rustic benches before the road-side inn. They were drinking deep draughts of strong beer, and eating bread and bacon upon their thumbs. Now and then they threw a spare word to each other betweenwhiles, or a scrap of their food to the dogs who guarded their loads from tramps or gipsies, and who waited very intelligently and patiently, looking up at them with wistful eyes. From time to time a loud laugh went off among them like the crack of a waggoner's whip at some tale of the road; but they were not a jocular set. When they had eaten their supper they usually slouched off one by one, and with a prolonged "Gee-wo, Dobbin !" to the leader of their team, went lumbering on their way. At last there only remained one or two steady topers, Harry Jinks the blacksmith, Mr. Joyce the sexton, and the landlord, whose minds and persons were constantly in soak, without appearing ever to get wet through. Night, sometimes so merciful, sometimes so full of pain and suffering and heavy with the birth of trouble, came slowly over the landscape. Cows and oxen were driven home from pasture, and one by one the lights began to shine in cottage windows. It was hardly a time to be abroad. The sun, after hiding itself all day, had fitfully broken out an hour ago, and left the sky red and angry. Dark clouds were rolling up in Titanic shapes from the west, and a few heavy drops of rain fell in the sullen manner which forebodes a storm.

Mr, Joyce, the sexton, a spare little man who seemed to have no room about him for the mighty tankards of ale he imbibed, and who looked so grave and respectable after he had disposed of them that people were inclined to believe some one else must have got tipsy in his place, commenced fumbling first in the ample flaps of his broad black coat, and then in the pockets of an extremely narrow pair of drab breeches, but without result. His gaiters had no pockets; perhaps he thought he might find some in his hat, for he took it off with a puzzled air; but only a red and yellow cotton handkerchief fell out.

"Ah," said Mr. Joyce, reflectively, "I do see how it be agin. My old 'oman's a took all the money, and a put un' in her ould stockin', that she have. Do 'ee chark up three pints, Madge. I'll pay next berryin',”

"That be noine pints as oi ha' dra'ad fur ye, sexton, wi' me own 'ans, sin' fower a clock," answered Madge, who came out in reply to his call. She was seldom asleep about a reckoning.

"Noine pints, as I'm a mon, Mr. Joyce," roared the blacksmith. "So it be, wench; so it be."

"Noa, it bain't," returned the sexton. "I ha' drunk summut wi' John Giles, fur company, but it don't count. Do it, John ?"

The landlord being thus appealed to, tried for a few minutes to get at some understanding of the subject upon which his decision was asked, but finding it all drowned, put down his pipe, that had gone out in the process, and stolidly let fall the words "nuff sed."

"John Giles doan't a waste un's talk, he doan't, blacksmith; he spakes to the pint, that he do. So I allus saith, an' so doth parson," remarked Mr. Joyce, whose language had a faint Biblical flavour about it whenever he wanted to get decently out of a difficulty. Moreover, the rural mind is ever ready with a bit of flattery for a crony who has anything to give away, and it is quite a mistake to suppose that sycophancy is confined to the upper classes. John Giles liked figs as well as any king, and Mr. Joyce having given him a sweet one, hobbled home, emitting a chuckle as heartfelt as escapes from the breast of an experienced courtier who has complimented the Prince of Monaco out of a place in the household. Whether such things are worth having, depends on the esteem in which a man holds beer and wine and small change.

The blacksmith rose with a yawn, stretched his great limbs, emptied his jug to the last drop and prepared to follow the sexton, when he noticed something coming slowly down the lane at a little distance. First it appeared like a red speck glancing through the trees, and behind it followed an object gaunt and shadowy, which dropped as it moved. The blacksmith had good eyes, and after watching these things for several minutes, he remarked to the ostler, who was looking after Madge, as he put away his pail for the night,

"There be wun of them there red coauts yonder, Tom, a leadin' of a lame 'oss, which have a broak down, to my mind. Maybe 'un on'y wants a shoe on, and I'll go down an' blow up the fire to make ready for 'un. I'd as lief earn a shillin' as not." And the blacksmith, thinking he had made a joke, gave out a laugh like the sound of a hammer upon an anvil.

On came the red-coat, with his horse toiling painfully after him, past the quiet mill, past the rectory, which had not been inhabited within living memory (the benefice to which it belonged being under sequestration, and the rector in the King's Bench prison), past the church which stood close by, past the stagnant pond, and the pound, where a tinker's donkey looked hungry and disconsolate enough. At last the dismounted horseman stopped before the inn door, and as he did so the old signboard of the " Chequers creaked as it swung on its hinges in the autumn wind, and the rain fell faster, as though the storm had burst through the cloud-gates that had hitherto restrained it.

"Ostler!" said the huntsman, in a pleasant but rather peremptory tone, "put up this horse, he has sprung a sinew, and make him comfortable. Landlord, let me have a glass of your best ale, and I shall want a gig to go on to Dronington."

The landlord repeated the word "gig," as who should say, “It is all very well to want a gig, but where am I to find one ?" and the rain lashed the road faster and faster.

Meantime, the huntsman had strode carelessly into the house, whip in hand, a splendid and noble figure of a man. He was tall and straight, with well-cut features, a colour fresh from health and exercise, and dark hair curling gracefully round his temples. He had flung himself on a wooden chair beside the kitchen fire, and was humming a tune in a clear strong voice, not unmusical, when Margaret Giles brought in some beer, and he looked up at her. He drank a deep draught, for he was thirsty after a long day with the Cloudesdale hounds, which was the most famous pack in those parts; then he fixed his large merry eyes again on the girl, and said, "What's your name, Mary?"

"Madge be moy neam, zur," replied the girl, blushing. "It bain't Mary, as I knows on."

Madge is a very pretty name," answered the huntsman, laughing, and showing a set of fine useful teeth; when Tom Ostler put a stop to the conversation, and pulling his hair in front as a token of respect, though he did not seem to welcome the stranger's arrival very cordially, he addressed the huntsman in this wise:

"Master do say as how yee do want a gig, zur?"

"Ah," replied the stranger, good-humouredly, and apparently recollecting something he had forgotten. "Yes, I want a gig. Put to at once, will you?

"We arn't got no gig," remarked Tom Ostler, with visible reluctance, but there's a waggon not fur down the road as allus stops a bit at the 'Barley Mow,' 'bout two mile on. Ye can catch 'un up, zur, if ye run for't."

"Thank you," answered the huntsman, throwing himself back in his chair, with an amused yawn. "I can't run after & waggon, but you can fetch it back on your shoulders, and Madge can make me up a bed there." He laughed more after this, and his laughter was so joyous that Madge laughed too, and Tom Ostler grinned, wondering what it was all about. He did not understand how anybody could see the fun of sleeping in a waggon while there was a dry hayloft, but he did not say so, because his words had got rusty from disuse and would not come out of him easily.

The huntsman, finding Tom did not move, but stood staring at him and Madge, walked whistling towards the window and looked out. It was quite dark, and the storm now raged with the fury of an equinoctial gale. Behind him was the ruddy glow of the inn fire, and Madge, who was busy getting ready the landlord's supper. It had a hungry smell, that supper, and the huntsman began to think a good deal about it. Presently he turned round sharply, cast an impatient glance at Tom Ostler, tapped the devil's tattoo on the small diamond-shaped panes of the inn windows, and then asked Madge if he could have a fire in a private room, some dinner, and a bed for the night.

What was it possessed the girl as she answered mechanically, "Yes?" She felt frightened after she had said it. No traveller had ever before required a dinner and a bed at the "Chequers," but it was a large rambling house, and there were several spare rooms which were never

wanted. She could light a fire in one of them, and put some clean sheets, of which she had a large store, on a bed in another. It was not very hard work to set about this, and the stranger would be gone next morning. Her idea of a dinner was eggs and bacon with fried eels, which were plentiful about there, and potatoes. It is not a very bad one. There were half-a-dozen flitches banging in the inn kitchen, plenty of eggs, and live eels enough and to spare in the tank: so an hour later the handsome gentleman, comfortably housed and fed, was dozing before a fire of his own, with his boots off and his slippered feet upon the fender.

CHAPTER III.

THE ROADSIDE INN.

THE blacksmith had ordered another jug of beer to moisten gossip, and had sat down to supper with John Giles, to talk about the stranger and his horse.

"I have heered," said the blacksmith, reverentially, "that such big blood 'osses as that there yonder do cost a'most a fortin."

"Depends on what 'ee call a fortin," remarked John Giles, who had a dusty recollection that some one had told him his brewers were worth a hundred thousand pounds. "A yoss can't cost a fortin, Harry."

"He do," replied Mr. Jinks, firmly; "my brother noo a mon as lived down away somewheres in Leicestershire, and as told 'un as how Sir Francis Burdett paid a matter o' seven hundred pound for a yoss they called Samson:' he worn't such a strapper as this one, by all accaents," and the blacksmith hit the table with a thump. Every one talked of Sir Francis Burdett in those days, and his name was a household word from one end of England to the other.

"Why, that there 'oss's shoes an' his saddle an' bridle cost as much as I earns in six months," continued the blacksmith after a pause.

"You earns a good bit in six months," returned the landlord, unable to grasp a fact so unfamiliar to his experience. "A bit of iron an' a scrap of pigskin can't be wuth much."

"Them there shoes be made of gun-barr'ls, they be; an' the saddles come all the way from Ingy," said the blacksmith, who was unwilling to relinquish a marvel when he had got fairly hold of it, and liked to make it as wonderful as possible, just as he made a shapely shoe with his hammer and tongs.

Madge sat in a corner of the inn kitchen drinking in these words, and the blacksmith, becoming conscious, by the magnetic influence of sympathy, that he had a willing listener somewhere in the neighbourhood, would have held forth much longer; but a steady series of snores, which began about this time to issue from the landlord, put him put in his narrative. The candle flared low in its socket at the same

time, and warned him it was growing late; so he said "good-night" and went home to bed. John Giles, being then awakened by the sudden silence, got up, rubbed his eyes drowsily, and having muttered something about nine o'clock, toddled off to rest also.

The girl sat some time longer by the kitchen fire, thinking of she knew not what, but thinking very deeply. It was years afterwards that she became conscious of the thoughts which had passed through her mind as she sat that night with her neglected needlework in her lap, her eyes fixed on the pictures which grew out of the living coals, and which perhaps first aroused her torpid fancy. She must have been sitting there more than an hour when Tom Brown, with a lantern in his hand, thrust himself half through the doorway, and breathed hard. But the girl, apparently unaware of his presence, did not move, so absorbed was she in her waking dream. What had come over her since the morning? She seemed far away from him; there was something strange and distant in her manner, like that of one who belonged to another order of creation; and the honest fellow became conscious of an inferiority he had never felt before. Still there was an infinite tenderness on his face which refined his coarse features, and gave an untaught grace to his movements, as he cautiously approached her, unwilling to intrude so mean a thing as himself upon her thoughts; but presently he spoke, and though what he said was very homely, his voice sounded kindly and firm, as that of a protector who would shield her from harm with his life, if needs were.

"I be fur to carry summut writ on peeaper into toun yonder," said Tom.

"Be ye?" answered Madge, impassively, and still looking at the fire. "It be fur him as be upstairs," continued Tom, jerking in that direction with his thumb; "an' it be matter o' a duzzen mile on end. I sharn't be back afore marnin.'

"It bain't no odds," said the girl, still motionless and absentminded.

"Ye bain't afeerd, be ye, Madge ?" inquired Tom, putting down his lantern. "If ye be, I wun't go. On'y say the word, I wun't go."

"What shud oi be feerd on?" answered the girl, angry at being disturbed in her reverie.

"Nought as I knows on," replied Tom, scratching his head, as though unconvinced by his own reasoning; and he passed into the darkness outside. The sound of his clumsy steps, as he plashed through the storm, were heard for a few minutes, and then all was still, save the monotonous ticking of the Dutch clock on the kitchen wall, the chirp of the cricket on the hearth, and the hum of silence in the air.

Madge then remembered that she had not cleared away the stranger's dinner, and went to do so. She found him fast asleep in a large armchair, which had not been filled since her foster-mother's death. The dying embers smouldered in the grate, and the candles gave a fitful light